News and Events

OPEN’s Tsinghua Ocean Center project has been awarded an Award of Excellence in the 2018 Education Facility Design Awards by the American Institute of Architects' (AIA) Committee on Architecture for Education (CAE). The Excellence Awards recognize state-of-the-art learning environments that "enhance learning in classrooms, balance function with aesthetics, establish a connection with the environment, respect the surrounding community, demonstrate high-level planning in the design process, and integrate sustainability in a holistic fashion." This year, AIA selected eight facilities for Awards of Excellence and two projects for Awards of Merit, on its annual list of the best schools and learning centers.

OPEN breaks ground on the new Chapel of Sound project on April 4th. This is a semi-outdoor concert hall located in a valley to the North of Beijing and famous for some remnants of Ming Dynasty Great Wall. The building looks as though a giant rock miraculously landed here in prehistoric times and somehow came to be inhabited by humans.

OPEN's founding partner Li Hu was invited to be one of the jury members of the 2018 VELUX Award for Students of Architecture, among a group of internationally acclaimed architects including RCR Arquitectes(the 2017 Pritzker Prize winners, Spain), Rick Joy(founder of Rick Joy Architects, USA), Sasa Begovic(founding partner and principal architect of 3LHD architects, Croatia) and Martin Pors Jepsen(vice president of VELUX Innovation Center, Denmark).

The award, given every two years, challenges students of architecture all over the world to explore the theme of daylight and consider its role in our lives as an ever-relevant source of light, life and energy in buildings. Since first launched in 2004, it has grown into what is probably the largest competition of its kind for the architects who will shape the buildings of our future.

The jury members will meet in Copenhagen to evaluate the student projects submitted by 15 June, and will then go on to name the overall and global winners at a live critique session in October 2018.

Invited by Yuan Ze University, Li Hu delivered a keynote lecture titled “How we learn to stop worrying and still love housing” at the “Social · Housing · Design International Symposium” in Taiwan on March 29th, 2018. The Symposium was organized by Professor Chen Kuanhua, the dean of Department of Art and Design, Yuan Ze University, and moderated by Professor Roan Chingyue. 5 Keynote speakers from China Mainland, Taiwan and Japan, including Kuo Hsuyuan, Yoko Kinoshita, Makoto Watanabe, Li Hu and Chang Chinghwa, shared their practice and insights in social housing and had a panel discussion with other guests.

Li Hu was invited to deliver a keynote speech at the Asia Pacific Architecture Forum taking place in Brisbane on March 16, 2018. He shared with audiences his observation on the challenges facing our environment and humanity today. Through some of OPEN’s latest projects on culture and education, he presented how architecture can be the medium to react to the challenges today and offer hope for the future.

The 2018 Asia Pacific Architecture Forum was hosted by Architecture Media and the State Library of Queensland(SLQ). As part of the Forum’s program, the launch event and book signing for OPEN’s new book Towards Openness was held at the Asia Pacific Design Lounge of the SLQ on March 17.

Announced at the 59th Civic Trust Awards ceremony held on March 9th 2018 at Old Trafford football club, the home of Manchester United, OPEN’s Tsinghua Ocean Center project received an Award for its overall excellence in architecture and positive civic contribution.

“Since it was founded in 1959, the aim of the Civic Trust Awards is to encourage the very best in architecture, to improve the built environment for us all through design, sustainability, inclusiveness and accessibility, but also to reward projects that offer a positive social, cultural, environmental or economic benefit to their local communities. The Civic Trust Awards has run continuously ever since, making it Europe’s longest running architectural and built environment awards program. It is also one of this country’s most important and prestigious.”The past winners include Foster+Partners, BIG, Henning Larsen, C.F. Møller and etc.

OPEN celebrates the North American launch of Towards Openness with a book event at Columbia University's GSAPP Incubator at NEW Inc. on February 21. Authored by Li Hu and Huang Wenjing, published by Applied Research + Design Publishing, Towards Opennessis a symphony of seven built projects and six idea chapters that are interwoven to offer an in-depth examination of OPEN's practice and critical thinking. In addition, the book brings together new contributions by Kenneth Frampton, Steven Holl, Lars Lerup, Yehuda Safran, Huang Juzheng, and Qing Feng.

After half a year’s construction, OPEN's Dune Art Museum topped out recently. The wooden formwork for thin shell cast-in-place concrete reveals the sophisticated and powerful structure of this building. The site lies in a natural sand dune zone on the seashore of Qinhuangdao, China. When the building structure is completed, sand will be filled back in between and on top of the “art cells”, and the dunes' original state will be restored. Except for the skylights, openings and a viewing platform that appear floating in the sands, the building will quietly disappear in the dunes by the sea.

Li Hu, the founding partner of OPEN, was invited to speak at Hong Kong Business of Design Week (BODW) 2017 on Dec. 7th. As a plenary speaker, he was interviewed by CNN Style and answered a series of rapid-fire exchanges on the design industry's future.

As Asia’s leading annual event on design and innovation, BODW brings to Hong Kongthe world’s most prominent figures and designers in creative arenas to inspire, share and network.